


Unopened

by IchiBri



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A little comfort, Angst, M/M, Pilot Error
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IchiBri/pseuds/IchiBri
Summary: Shiro gives Keith an envelope before leaving on the Kerberos mission with instructions not to open it until he's gone.





	Unopened

He said to wait until he was gone, wait until the shuttle was out of sight and the trail of fire died in the sky.  Only then was Keith allowed to open the envelope with his own name scrawled across the front in thin, narrow letters.

Each stroke of a letter was quick and soft, but the white of the ink stood starkly on the red cardstock.  Handmade, Keith presumed.  Why Shiro would go to so much trouble to make an envelope when the supply room had cases of them, Keith didn’t know.  But his finger itched to slide under the lip and peel off the glittering star sticker which sealed it.

Keith waited, though.  Even as the trail of fire climbed above the clouds, he shielded his eyes with the envelope.  It cast shade over his nose and cheeks.  Maybe even his heart, for his chest felt the cold of a dreary day as he watched the fire fizzle to smoke.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Shiro had said in the dim lamplight of his dorm room last night.  They had sat shoulder to shoulder on the floor, talking about space and stars and the unknowns that might be found among them.

As Keith contemplated following the smoky staircase into the atmosphere, he hoped Shiro was right.  He hoped he’d wake up tomorrow and run into Shiro on his way to sparring practice.  But he knew better than to believe months would pass in the beat of a heart.

Long after the crowd dispersed and the shuttle’s trail faded into the clouds of the sky, Keith stood alone watching the sun set.  The reds and oranges of the horizon darkened to night as the moon shone down upon Keith.  Only then did he return to his room and leave the unopened envelope on his desk.  When Shiro returned, they’d open it together.

***

_Pilot Error._

The words still echoed in his head every time he looked through his phone’s gallery and saw a picture of Shiro.  Yet, his finger hovered over the screen and pressed the icon without fail day after day.  Reading old text messages, listening to voicemails he should’ve long since deleted, gazing upon the unopened envelope pinned to the corkboard in the shack; it all burned his heart with an unquenchable longing.

Keith reached for that red envelope and its hidden message every night.  He held it in his hands and tipped his head low in silent prayer to the stars above.  To every ball of gas, every asteroid and plummeting rock, every planet with the namesake of a Roman god, he asked–begged–them to protect Shiro.  Because Shiro was out there.  Somewhere in the vastness of the universe, Shiro was fighting his way back home.  And until he was by Keith’s side again, Keith would pin the envelope on the corkboard, its sticker seal unbroken.

***

Shiro’s cheeks were warm with the flush of love as he held the pen between his fingers.  Only slightly shaky, he wrote the one name he’d never grow tired of saying across the envelope’s face.  After he capped the pen and set it upon the desk, his finger feathered along the white ink, tracing each letter as if they weren’t already engraved into his heart.

When he came back, he’d tell Keith in person.  It would be the first thing to come out of his mouth when he set foot upon Earth’s soil once more.  But until then, he enclosed them in red and sealed them with a sticker.

_‘I love you.  Please, wait for me.’_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading~  
> Find me @ichibri on tumblr and twitter


End file.
